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Oldcastle But all that was thoroughly thought out before she left the Oronta at Adelaide; and to-day I am less less able, shall I say, than I was then? It is singular that these few days in bed should have stolen so much of my strength. The mere exertion, if that it may be called, of writing these few lines leaves me curiously exhausted; yet they have been written extraordinarily slowly for me.
Oldcastle was to leave the Oronta, her destination being the South Australian capital. That I had become none too sure of myself in her company is proved by the fact that when I left her that evening, it was with mention of a pretended headache and chill. I kept my cabin next day, and before noon on the day following that we were due at Port Adelaide. Mrs.
The upshot was that we strolled for some time, took tea in the Café Umberto, walked through the Museo, visited one of the city's innumerable glove-shops, and finally, still together, drove back to the port and rejoined the Oronta. As fellow-passengers we had up till this time merely exchanged casual salutations, Mrs.
The Oronta was a dull ship for me once she had passed Adelaide; duller even than in the grey days between Tilbury and Naples. Adelaide passed, an Australian-bound liner seems to have reached the end of her outward passage, and yet it is not over.
So far from sprawling upon the snowy deck of a forecastle-head, to watch the phosphorescent lights in the water under our ship's bow, saloon passengers on board the Oronta were not expected ever to intrude upon the forward deck the ship had no forecastle-head which was reserved for the uses of the crew.
I never heard or saw the process of relieving wheel or look-out aboard the Oronta, and long before the beginning of the middle watch I had usually switched off for the night the electric reading-lamp over my pillow. The fact is, of course, that I had never had any kind of training for such a life as that in which I now found myself.
Heron had mildly satirised my sybaritic plans as representing an ingenious preparation for hut life in the Australian bush, but I had claimed that comfort and privacy on the passage would give me a deserved holiday, and help put me into good form for my fresh start oversea. I am not sure which view was the more correct. At all events I certainly was very comfortably placed on board the Oronta.
I do not mean that I had thought I should trot about the decks of the Oronta bare-footed, as I and my childish companions had done aboard the Ariadne; but I do mean that the atmosphere of the Ariadne life had coloured all my thoughts of what the present trip would be for me. And that, of course, was a mistake.
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